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Textured Tactile Touchscreens
HizookRobotics writes "A new covering developed by Senseg and Toshiba Information Systems gives touchpads, LCDs, and other curved surfaces (eg. cellphones) programmable texture using a high-resolution electrotactile array — a grid of electrodes that excite nerves in the skin with small pulses of current to trick the body into perceiving texture, pressure, or pin-pricks depending on the current amplitude and electrode resolution. The new covering has many potential applications: interactive gaming, touchscreens with texture, robot interfaces, etc."
It would be nice if this could be developed into a way to simulate a keyboard on a touchscreen. All these multitouch devices are great to use, but it can be a pain to type on them, so a way to give tactile feedback on what is a key vs two keys, would help a lot.
Can it be modified to present the user with the experience of, say, 1000 volts at about 20 amps?
I'll take 1,000 please.
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Is Star Trek really predicting things or is it more that the current generation of geeks were raised on Star Trek and they make it happen? I think its more of sci-fi pictures a futuristic world of utopia and has some gadgets to make it seem realistic and futuristic, people want to make the utopia happen and such so they go back and make real-world implementations of the gadgets.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe I'm in a minority, but I already feel an odd sensation of "pain" when I use that odd textured (array of bumps?) on some netbook touchpads. It's a weird radiating electrical buzz feeling up and into my wrist when I slide my finger across it. I know there is no pain and it's just an odd nerve interpretation, but it exists for me none-the-less. I'd hate to use something like that on a regular basis and it sounds like they are trying to replicate that exact feeling on touch devices. No thank you!
probably a bit of both. A lot of the cool stuff on star trek were done because of a limited budget. ie. the transporter effects were cheaper to produce than showing a shuttle landing on a planet. The consoles in TNG had touch screen control because they could just paint a peice of plastic and slap it on instead of installing individual buttons and knobs.
Because of limited budgets, the prop designers had to follow KISS. Which is a good principle to follow when designing real devices even if you have a big budget.
There have been moving Braille output devices in the past. They were used in the days of text terminals. One can be seen in the movie Sneakers.
You're not thinking hard enough. Think of GUI interfaces with textured window outlines and braille fonts on window titles, window gadgets, and so on. A solution would have to be found to the hover problem, but a foot switch or foot click-enable pedal (or noise-based clicking, or, or, or...) would solve that nicely. Right now if you want to use a GUI you have to use a screen reader. You can use it in concert with a braille output device but that's not the same thing as having one device to work with so you don't need one hand on the pointing device, one hand on the reader, and a third hand for the keyboard. There are numerous mice with haptic feedback and adding vibration to a touchpad ought to be an exercise in triviality (there might be some de-jittering needed but otherwise it's a fairly well-solved problem) so there are already numerous ways the blind might apprehend a GUI. Though, I admit, I have not at all kept up with what the blind are using in specifics since the text-only days...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
a grid of electrodes that excite nerves in the skin with small pulses of current to trick the body into perceiving texture, pressure, or pin-pricks depending on the current amplitude and electrode resolution.
Am I the only here imagining some malware creator cackling as he tries to figure a way to deliver as much current as the battery can pump with a single touch of the screen once his virus gets downloaded?